


Polarize

by Make_No_Apology



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, BAMF John, Dancer Sherlock, Drug Abuse, Drug Use, Fluff and Angst, John is John, John wants to help Sherlock, Johnlock later on, M/M, Secrets, Sherlock Likes to Dance, Slow Build, Slow Burn, characters will be added, mention of bullying, otherwise normal Sherlock, unconfident Sherlock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-09-25 14:03:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9823769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Make_No_Apology/pseuds/Make_No_Apology
Summary: He was getting sick of the boredom that took over his life most of the time. He needed to escape it somehow. The only time he truly felt free was when he was at the studio. Just being there calmed him and his furious mind. And the moment he finally got to lose himself in the music and just dance, it felt like heaven to Sherlock. It was the only thing that made his living bearable.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sherlock is a chemistry student with a secret he won't be able to hide forever. And when that secret is taken from him he doesn't know what to do with his mind, so he turns to darker ways of coping.





	1. The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Hello,  
> I'm just writing and we'll see where this takes me. I do have a loose plot and you're warned it will get dark.  
> I want the story to develop so we won't just jump in in the middle, you'll have to wait and see how everything builds up (:  
> The first chapter is mostly just the setting, so you'll get a feeling for the story. I'm not even sure if this will be any good, so please tell me what you think.  
> I like longer stories best so each chapter will be aroun 1.000 - 2.000 words. Also English isn't my native lanuage so please excuse any mistakes I may have made. I'm looking for a beta to help me if anyone is interessted don't hesitate to talk to me (:  
> Enough of this, I hope you like it!

 

_Call me Storyman and listen well. This is something about nothing_ , Sherlock thought to himself while getting out of bed. It would be another normal day at the university. But at least university wasn’t as dull as college had been and he had to admit that the professors were less idiotic here, even though almost everyone of them was still dim-witted. At least he would be able to go to the studio later on. It was something he looked forward to and probably the only reason he left his sanctuary today.

  
He finally stood up from the mattress and went to the small bathroom next to his bedroom. He didn’t look in the mirror, not really caring how he appeared, and went directly under the shower. The water turned hot quickly and Sherlock stood under the spray longer than necessary, lost in his thoughts.

  
Did he really have to go to class today? He wouldn’t miss anything he didn’t know already anyway, so why bother? He could stay home and work on one of his experiments, or he could go to the studio earlier and try to fix the problem with his balance. He needed something to occupy his mind and class surely wouldn’t do that. Sherlock would just sit there during the lecture and would have to control himself in order not to shout “wrong” every time someone said something. The directorate had made more than clear that he wouldn’t be able to stay at the university any longer, if his behaviour didn’t change.

  
So Sherlock tried to control himself. He always took a seat in the last row, hoping the professor wouldn’t notice it if he doze off during his boring reading. He bit is tongue every time he wanted to say something and avoided all kinds of social contact. Not that this was hard for Sherlock. He wasn’t really a human person anyway so he really didn’t mind staying on his own.

  
If it wouldn’t be for Mycroft, Sherlock wouldn’t even try to avoid any more problems. But his brother had his ways of getting what he wanted and Sherlock couldn’t find the nerve to tell him off. After all Mycroft was the clever one of them and he got along with humans better than Sherlock did.

  
Sherlock had learned early in his life that it was always better to stay unnoticed rather than being the centre of attention. It was weird how children reacted being put in a room with a child so much smarter than they are. First Sherlock was excited to go to school but after his second day he knew it would be hell and he had been right, like so many times after that.

  
The children in his class felt intimidated by his intellect and started picking on him. The more Sherlock tried to reason with them, saying it was only logic he used, the worse it got. Primary school was one thing and by the end of it Sherlock had hoped it would be better in Secondary School. But by the end of his first week Sherlock still had no friends, quite to contrary was the fact. Sherlock had made himself unpopular with the things he’d said, even if it wasn’t much, it had been enough to guarantee him a hard time. He experienced a whole new level of bullies and bullying. Knowledge he could have lived without.

  
It was no wonder that Sherlock didn’t want to be noticed at university. Again, he had hoped it would get better. Even if he wasn’t bullied anymore, because of the fact that he had as less social contact as possible, the lectures were still dull and boring most of the time.

  
So here he was, going to university because his brother told him it would break their parents’ hearts, if Sherlock threw away his brains. He would ‘educate’ himself a bit more and then work on a boring job, if everything went like Mycroft wanted, and the older Holmes always got what he wanted. The perfect example for that was the fact that Mycroft was working for the British government at a rather high position for his age.

  
As Sherlock dried himself off, he noticed the time on the little clock hanging on the bathroom wall. He would be late if he didn’t hurry now. Keeping in mind to stay unnoticed, Sherlock decided that he would rather be on time than be late and risking a lecture from the professor. The possibility to skip class was dismissed for now. He had to be the obedient puppy Mycroft wanted him to be, otherwise the older Holmes would never stop bothering him. Better play along for now.

  
Sherlock skipped breakfast, like he did so often since he had an apartment of his own. This time his excuse was that he would be late if he’d eat something but secretly he knew better. Eating was something normal, boring people did, something unnecessary he had to do sometimes but not too often. It was just a distraction from thinking. Sherlock needed his blood in his brain, not working in his bowels trying to digest food.

  
He closed the door of 221 behind him and made his way to the tube. He tried to ignore the people around him. They weren’t worth thinking about, mostly just plain faces with boring problems behind the mask they showed the world. Well, they thought it was a mask but Sherlock could see right through them. It was so obvious and yet, nobody else seemed to notice. They called Sherlock a freak for stating the obvious. How could people be so stupid?

  
Entering the underground, Sherlock became more and more frustrated. He got onto Circle Line heading to Liverpool Street where he had to change trains to the Hammersmith Line until he could finally get of at Stepney Green Station and walk the rest of the way to the Queen Mary University of London.

  
Standing near the doors of the wagon, Sherlock allowed his vision to wander over the people surrounding him. The first person he noticed was a blond women sitting to his right. Just to avoid being bored, Sherlock enabled himself to play a round of deduction. He took every detail in and when he was finished, which didn’t took him long at all, he bit his lips in order not to laugh hysterically.

  
The striking thing about the women were her awful green shoes. Nobody with any sense of fashion would wear such hideous things. The rest of her outfit spoke business and fitted together perfectly, even the accessories were stylish and matched her makeup and nail polish. So she did have a sense of fashion, even was a perfectionist and a hard working one as well, and still chose this shoe on purpose. Now the question was, why? The answer was obvious. She rocked her feet and even though she seemed to be in a higher position she was clearly nervous about going to work. She was most likely not respected or just ignored at all. So she tried to get attention through her outfit, but because she was more of an introvert person (just look at the way she’s sitting) she wasn’t brave enough to try something more risky than frog green shoes. She would never have the courage to speak up for herself so the only way she saw was getting attention through something notable. She also was single and hoped she would find someone nice because of her ‘brave’ fashion style.

  
Sherlock almost pitied her if she wouldn’t have been so dreadfully common. He couldn’t be bothered to care for other people. Caring, after all, was not an advantage. Almost everyone on the train was self-centred. While they did care for others, unlike Sherlock, they always saw their own problems first. Trying to chase the solution but never really getting it. They never saw the whole picture, which was what made them so dull. They just weren’t able to think and Sherlock was getting sick of it.

  
He was getting sick of the boredom that took over his life most of the time. He needed to escape it somehow. The only time he truly felt free was when he was at the studio. Just being there calmed him and his furious mind. The moment he finally got to lose himself in the music and just dance, it felt like heaven to Sherlock. It was the only thing that made his living bearable.   
Sherlock changed trains and stared into the blackness of the passing tunnels.

  
He was already twitchy and that wouldn’t change until he put his dancing shoes on, until he was alone with the music. As much as dancing was Sherlock’s passion nobody knew about it. He could hear the laughter from his fellow students and from Mycroft when he imagined dancing in front of an audience. They would see him as an even bigger freak than they already thought he was. They would call him a girl and never respect him again. Keeping that in mind, Sherlock kept his passion a secret. The only person knowing about it was Molly Hooper.

  
She was also a student at the QMUL and sometimes they shared a lab at St. Bartholomew’s. She was smarter than most people believed her to be and Sherlock tolerated her. Molly was almost something he would call a friend. The only reason she knew about Sherlocks dancing was the fact that she enjoyed dancing herself. If it was by accident or on purpose that they ended up together in the same studio Sherlock did not know. He could find it out if he wanted to, but Molly didn’t seem like a threat to him and she never told anyone.

  
So why bother finding out that she had followed him once and then signed herself up at the same studio Sherlock went to, just so she could be near him more often? Molly was nice after all, so there was no reason for Sherlock to be so paranoid. Clearly it was just coincidence that Molly showed up at the studio.

  
The trained stopped at Stepney Green Station and Sherlock got out as fast as possible. He hurried up the stairs and took a deep breath once he was out in the open again. He didn’t like riding the tube, there were too many people around him, staring and him and still seeing nothing.

Sherlock made his way to Queen Mary quickly, shouldering his bag and staring at nothing in particular. _Here it goes again. Another dull day in my worthless existence,_ he thought and entered the building.

 


	2. An ordinary encounter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is late, sorry! I'm graduating at the moments and my finals are stressing me out. Still, I believe in this story (:

The first lecture went by as expected. Sherlock was in the last row and after 30 minutes of listening to the stupid rambling of his professor he decided to zoom out. He couldn’t listen to the man at the top one minute longer without screaming. Why, why were people so idiotic?

Why couldn’t they understand that there were more important things than the ones they were confronted with every day. They would never understand, or even just see, the world like he saw and understood it. The structure in all the chaos, the way different motivations had the same effect on every human, be it love, hate, revenge, ignorance or a feeling for justice. Every person acted the same when being faced with one of those. He had yet to find someone who was different. Sure there was Mycroft but even Mycroft was boring to Sherlock most of the time.

So instead of doing something as stupid as attracting attention, he simple took his iPod out of his jacket and put the headphones on. As soon as the soothing notes from Debussy reached his ear he could lean back. Just listening to the music itself wasn’t as relaxing as actually dancing to it, but it was better than nothing.

Sherlock closed his eyes and took every note in as it caressed his ears. He took a deep breath and could feel his mind calm a bit. He longed for something different but what exactly he did not know. All he knew was that he needed to escape, escape the gray everyday life and the stupidity of the people surrounding him. But most of all he needed to shut his brain up.

Every time Sherlock had used his brain in some sort he had been punished somehow afterwards, most of the time through the behaviour of other people. His brain had caused him so much trouble when he was a kid. If it wouldn’t have been for his ability to see and observe maybe he would have been a normal kid growing up. Maybe he would have had friends. But it was useless pondering over the past, Sherlock couldn’t change it now anyway.

But what he could do was trying to ignore his racing mind, the thousand thoughts running through his head in mere seconds. It was rare and only on special occasions when he allowed himself to think properly. Often it was when he grew too bored to contain himself that he gave in and played deduction, or in situations where he wanted to hurt people, so that they wouldn’t bother with him any longer.

That was Sherlocks tactic, as soon as someone invaded his personal guards he played deduction with them, telling them their deepest secrets. Afterwards everybody thought he was a freak or a dick, sometimes even both, and didn’t bother him any longer. After all alone was what protected him. If nobody could get close to him, then nobody was able to hurt him again.

So he tried to ignore his own thoughts most of the time, having made bad experiences when using his mind rather than hiding the information he could see so clearly. He craved the emptiness of his head more than anything. In a way he was his own worst enemy. It was always Sherlock against his own mind. But if you would take away his brain from him, what would be left? Would he be happier living a mundane life like everybody around him? He would be as dull and ignorant as the people surrounding him, the ones he loathed so much.

It was like he was twisted inside. He wanted one thing but in order to get it he would have to delete his knowledge. Would it be worth it? Living a normal life, not being able to connect the easiest things. Sherlock couldn’t imagine a life without his mind, but a life with it wasn’t that much more promising either.

That was why he loved dancing so much. To him it was like breathing, a necessary thing he could not survive without. It cleared his mind, if only for a few hours. He was finally able to be at ease, to be fully himself without being afraid of getting hurt. As long as nobody saw him, that was. He could be free.

Feeling something poking his shoulder, Sherlock opened his eyes. The first thing he noticed is a blue tone, like the ocean during a storm, there are bright parts along with dark parts, even a bit gray is notable. Sherlock is mesmerized and it takes him a few seconds before he realised that he is staring into a pair of eyes.

In a few more seconds he registered the rest of the face. It belongs to a sandy haired boy, most likely a few years older than Sherlock but no more than 24 years everything considered. The boy is smiling and as his lips move Sherlock noticed that the music is this blasting from his headphones. He took them of, somewhat confused that a strange boy is seeking social interaction with him.

“Excuse me?” Sherlock said in his cold, unemotional tone not showing any of his earlier confusion. Surely this would be just an ordinary encounter he didn’t need to pay attention too. Even though it was somewhat weird to be approached by a total stranger.

The boy licked his lips and speaks again. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but the lecture is over. I thought you hadn’t noticed since you just sat there with your eyes closed. Did you fall asleep mate?”

His voice was honest and friendly and Sherlock could hear the slight amusement under the said words. He realised that the sandy haired boy wanted nothing more than to help. That was strange, normally people avoided him. On top of that he was still smiling at Sherlock.

“I wasn’t sleeping,” Sherlock informed him and started to back his belongings into his bag. Why did he had even bothered to take a notepad and pencils out? He ignored the other one, thinking that now, after he had made Sherlock aware of the facts, he would just go away. But it seemed like Sherlock was wrong.

“My name’s John Watson,” came the voice again and when Sherlock looked up he saw an outstretched hand offered for him to take it. He eyed the offered hand, stood up and hissed, rolling his eyes in annoyance. Better to get this over with, he thought to himself.

His eyes wandered over John and he allowed his mind to work freely, now that he needed it. It would scare this John Watson off, like it had done so many times with other people and afterwards he would go on with his boring routine not thinking about Sherlock again.

“You’re a medicine student and enjoy playing rugby. You like helping people and since you’re at the QMUL I assume that you’re training to become an army doctor, since the QMUL is working with St. Barts. You’re currently in a relationship with someone but she is too clingy and you think about breaking up. You should by the way,” Sherlock finished and turned away. Surely this would have been enough to anger John.

Here it comes, Sherlock thinks as John starts to talk. “How... bloody hell.” John is staring at him, he could feel Johns eyes boring through the back of his skull. Sherlock lets out a deep breath, bracing himself for the following insults.

“That was amazing!”

Stunned Sherlock turned around to look at the medicine student, narrowing his eyes at him. “Excuse me?” He asked again, out of confusion.

“That was awesome. How did you do it,” John required still wearing a smile on his face.

He didn’t look pissed at all, Sherlock noticed and his confusion grew even bigger. He had never gotten such a reaction, his tactic wasn’t going to work on this John person. But why? Why wasn’t he intimidated like all the others before him. Sherlock frowned and stared intensely at the sandy haired student as if he could solve this puzzle by just looking at him.

“Uhm, I’m sorry,” John said and cleared his throat. “Did I offend you in a way?”

Sherlock couldn’t believe it, he had just insulted this man in his own personal way and now John was asking if he had offended Sherlock? That was incredible and Sherlock couldn’t hold back a small amused laugh. How come this guy was so unpredictable, or was he? He didn’t fit in the patters Sherlock had studied at other people, so there definitely was something about him.

“You didn’t,” Sherlock clarified, clearing his throat for no reason at all. “I’m just not used to this reaction. Normally people answer differently,” he said honestly still keeping an close eye on the man opposite of him.

“And how do they answer?” John seemed honestly curious which stroke Sherlock as wrong. Why did he care?

Sherlock shrugged and said simply “Piss off.” To his surprise John started laughing and he joint in. Why the hell did he join in? This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

“I haven’t caught your name, I’m afraid.” John said wearing his everlasting smile that annoyed Sherlock on a whole new lever, yet unknown to him.

He was about to leave when he looked into those blue eyes again. Something about John Watson was definitely different and for a moment Sherlock allowed himself to let his guards down.

“My name is Sherlock Holmes.”

“Pleasure to meat you, Sherlock.” John sounded honest not even batting an eye at his odd name and he was still wearing that bloody smile of his.

“Whatever,” Sherlock simply said and fled the situation. What was wrong with him? He shouldn’t have any social contact. It was against his rules and it wouldn’t end well anyway. Better end it now than getting hurt later.

But a tiny voice in his head told him that this would be different. John was different. Maybe he would like Sherlock, maybe Sherlock could have him as a friend? The thought terrified Sherlock and he shut his mind down, ignoring all the ‘ifs’ and ‘whens’. He had to stick to his rules, they protected him, being alone protected him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! (: Maybe tell me how or if you liked it?

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. Maybe tell me what you think?


End file.
